Week 7, Year 2: Egg Sentry Post-Mortem.

It's been another busy week; the final week of the Sentry Gun project. I'm pretty chuffed with the end result. It detects the player when they get close, it shoots lasers from the right place and it even has a firing sound.

And most importantly, it looks pretty egg-celent.

Final Render in Unreal Engine.

As you may have seen last week, I've been modelling a physical version of my sentry egg in the evenings. Because papier-mâché, Breaking Bad and stress eating, is a nice way to wind down from a day of crying into your keyboard.

OK I'm eggs-aggerating a little, it's not so bad. 

I'm really pleased with my physical model. I'm not sure that modelling board was the best choice of material as it's quite stubborn and doesn't bend easily. I ended up using a lot of superglue but at least it's strong. And the legs even fold in!

Physical Model, made with Papier-mâché and Modelling Board.

But what about the animation? Unfortunately, I ran out of time before I could get it popping open in engine. I massively underestimated how much work is involved in animating even simple objects. 

I also didn't account for inevitable beginner mistakes and the enormously intimidating curve editor.

You might say I over egg-stended myself.

lolwut?

That said, I was determined to have something to show for my hard work. So I got it working in 3DS Max and rendered out a video, which I then turned into this GIF.

Not bad for a first crack at animation. I think it's pretty egg-citing.

I may have spent too long on this.

Even though it was a bit of a mad scramble towards the end, I'm really pleased with this project. I broke out of my comfort zone, tried something new and arrived at a solid result.

While it was egg-sausting, this project was a very valuable eggs-ercise.

Ok that's it. I'm done. I promise. But I'll never be sorry.